Total Bargain

For all things that come to an end, something else begins, well that was my reasoning in arguing for the Christmas Tree to stay up till I went back to uni. Well actually it was that Mum and I would be away for the twelve days of Christmas and we wanted to be able to enjoy the tree πŸ™‚ Yep I go back to uni in 17hrs so the tree was taken down today. Even though I had rigged up a watering system for it this year to ensure it stayed green for as long as possible, it died quite a few days ago. Almost everyday Pabbi would whinge and whine asking if the tree would be taken down today, the answer was always just a couple of more days. The living room now has a bare patch and the curtains lack decoration now as well. Oh well, Christmas always comes around soon enough.

Whilst on my lunch break yesterday I spent a delightful time at the clearance racks in Myer and I walked out with a pair of stone coloured Italian cotton Country Road pants (which means I now have 3 pairs of gorgeous CR styled pants) and a gorgeous emerald green silk v-neck top. Which I wore of course when I went out last night to farewell my night fill manager, who at the tender age of 20!! is going to be trading manager (i.e. 3rd in charge) of the Bi-Lo store at Airlie Beach. He’ll be a store manager in ten years or so probably.

Whilst looking on the racks I also saw this gorgeous pleated silk Country Road balloon skirt which I tried on and loved except it had this one problem, I didn’t like the balloon look, which Mum tells me was high fashion in 1957 and that people would add netting so that they would balloon up even more.My plan was/is to unpick the skirt from the lining and kill that balloon look and hem the bottom so it would just be a straight pleated skirt but I am slightly sort of starting to like the mini balloon. Who knows?

Mum and I went back this morning to look at the balloon skirt which I did pick up and I managed to get another Country Road skirt which will be nice for uni and a pair of cropped JAG jeans also perfect for days at Uni when jeans would just be death due to the heat πŸ™‚

Grand total for 1 top (AU$99.95), 2 pants (AU$99.95 & AU$189) and 2 skirts (AU$229 & AU$ 139) at RRP AU$756.90.

Price I paid after staff discount and two stages of clearance? AU$267.27

Total bargain, I say πŸ™‚

More Layouts from Tasmania

Well Uni starts back on Monday and I am doing five subjects this semester instead of the usual four to gain an extra major so I won’t be creating as much. I am thinking at the moment to designate each interest a week so in that week any free time I have, I will spend doing X. That is the plan… but here are some layouts I did the other day from our trip to Tasmania. Click on the photos to be taken to a larger image and their notes. πŸ™‚
Yacht Race Richmond Bridestowe Lavender

An Afternoon at the Queensland Art Gallery

This past Sunday, Mum and I went into the Queensland Art Gallery to look at a couple of exhibitions, one that had it’s last day on Sunday and the other two had opened the day before and oh it was such a wonderful jaunt.The first was “Made for this World”, contemporary art & the places we build, which was an exhibition aimed to encourage children to look twice at the places around them, it had some great activities to do including making bridges or whatever structure you wished from short flexible bamboo skewers and masking tape using bridge drawings by Cai Guo Qiang as ideas. Another activity was to go dotty in Yayoi Kusama’s “The obliteration room 2002”, which has an online version here. The last hand-ons activity was Icelander Olafur Eliasson’s “The cubic structural evolution project 2004”, which invited patrons to build buildings out of white Lego pieces to be placed in a constantly evolving city (photo below).

The cubic structural evolution project

The other two we went to see were Margaret Preston: Art and Life, which is an extraordinary exhibit of her paintings, monotypes and prints as well as photos and objects from her life. This exhibit is a traveling one organised by the Art Gallery of New South Wales, so if happens to visit a town near you, I strongly urge you to visit. The actual website of the exhibition is here.

The other was Grace Cossington Smith: A Retrospective Exhibition, which is also a traveling exhibition but organised by the National Gallery of Australia, the tour website is here and features an exhaustive online catalog of her work. We didn’t spend as much time in this one as we did in the Margaret Preston one but it was equally as amazing, I really liked how in comparision to Preston who I felt emphasised the structure of the flowers and buildings in her work, Cossington Smith emphasised the colours that she saw that made up her subjects not always the colours that we would see in a scene. Quite an enjoyable afternoon, which we finished off with a browse of the Art Gallery Shop πŸ™‚

Helen’s Best Ever Biscuits

Last night I figuratively let down the hair after work and had one hell of a night out with one of my best friends, lots of talk, lots of vodka fire-engines, lots of dancing, lots of laughs and a cute boy or two. Total blast of a night and I got to wear a gorgeous skirt I picked up yesterday from Myer for $18 reduced from $60! score!
I made the best biscuits I have ever made and/or eaten the other day, a variation of a family staple called Apricot Wheat-germ Biscuits, these I think shall be called Sultana Hazelnut Biscuits.20060218_7833

Ingredients:
1.5 cups soft brown sugar
250g softened cooking margarine
2 eggs
dollop of vanilla
1 cup cornflakes
1 cup coconut
3/4 cup sultanas
1 cup hazelnut meal
1.75 cups whole-meal plain flour
3tsp baking powder

Method:
Preheat oven to 160°C and grease biscuit trays. Cream together margarine and sugar, add in eggs. All in together this fine weather mix in the rest of the ingredients, adding a bit of milk if mixture is too dry or some more flour if mixture is too moist.
Roll into balls and flatten lightly and cook in oven till when a finger pressed lightly into a biscuit does not leave a mark. Makes plenty.

A Bag for Jemma

Jemma's Bag A ducky little bag for sweet little girl, this bag is going to Tracy’s daughter, Jemma who loves cats

The bag was made using the Jordy Bag Tutorial at Crafster.org which is a slightly different construction method to how I made Rachel’s bag the other day. I created the shaping of the bag by first pressing the connecting lines between the four corners and then pressing from the corners up to either side of the handle which creates the sloping sides πŸ™‚

I went with Mum to Queensland Quilters last night for the sole purpose of browsing the library for interesting books to check out and I came home with 6 issues of Patchwork Quilt Tsushin and 1 issue of Patchwork Club. All of which are chock full of great bags and very nice quilts πŸ™‚

shoes, ornaments, a bag and so much more.

Stream Shoes The other day I picked up a pair of Source Stream sandals and they are just pure bliss, I have a hard time with shoes from wearing a 9.5 but mostly finding shoes that are always comfortable and can wear all day. Well these certainly fit the criteria and they are so funky as well – the images on the straps are sunflowers πŸ™‚

I have been after some new work pants for a while now but finding good work pants is hard as well. Pants need to be loose fitting, breathable, big pockets etc so that I can actually fill the shelves instead of standing like a bean post, well I found a pair in the most unlikely shop. I was in Mountain Designs and saw some travel pants, which fitted all the criteria – black, loose, pockets, breathable. Score! What makes them even better is that they are a 55% Hemp/45% PET blend, dude my pants are a bong! (yeah I know that the hemp they grow for fabric is different to the pot kind but still), the best bit? They were reduced from $90 to $40, score!

Mikasa Cake Stand

How cute is this little cake stand from Mikasa? It is 5.75″ wide and 4″ high, perfect for taking photos of a single slice of cake or some biscuits πŸ™‚

Villeroy & Boch Ornaments

Two more purchases, as my family and friends know, I have a very good relationship with Christmas Ornaments, we go together like Vegemite and cheese or milk and milo, so when I saw these in the Vileroy & Boch store at DFO, nothing was going to stop me taking them home with me. They are from the Scandinavian Christmas 2004 series, which was the second year in V&B’s Christmas round the world annual collection, Russia was 2003 and America was 2005.
A bag for Rachel

This is a bag I made for a friend who loves cats and is quite fluent in Japanese, so what better than a bag based on a pattern in a Japanese craft book and Japanese quilting fabric? Idea for the bag is from this book (the middle one on the front cover) – ISBN4529040011. Crafting Japanese entry for the book.
Pandanni

I love Pandani! They were such cool plants to play with whilst in Tasmania, the way the leaves formed corkscrews was just so cool, so here is a layout I did on them earlier today πŸ™‚

Well that is for the moment, I was in the middle of making a bag but I ran out of thread πŸ™ so now I am playing in photoshop and chilling out to the crazy/beautiful soundtrack.